Give Up the Ghost: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (10 page)

B
efore I left the house the following morning, I met with Stan and went over the Crosswinds contract which, due to its unusual content—ghost ridding and remodel dismantling—required more thought than the usual boilerplate. Then we chatted about where some of the Crosswinds items might have wound up. Yesterday Stan had called around to salvage yards, but so far he hadn’t gotten any hits. The folks answering the phone were usually underpaid workers who didn’t keep records of where items came from. And they surely didn’t keep track of what they sold. It was a cash business, easy in, easy out.

A lot of their inventory came from off the back of some contractor’s truck, but items also came in from homeowners and junk dealers, or were picked up off the street. I myself once had caused a major traffic snarl when I stopped my vehicle in the middle of International Boulevard to pick up a slightly distressed stained glass window.

I hated to admit it, but finding the items torn out of
the Flynt residence was a long shot. According to what he’d told me, Skip had dumped them five months ago, and many would have been snatched up by savvy antiques store dealers. A solid copper antique weathervane wouldn’t have lasted two days in a well-patronized salvage yard.

On the other hand, there were enough nooks and crannies in some of those places that some items could be overlooked. I decided to check a few out in person later this morning. But first, I had made arrangements by e-mail to meet the Crosswinds Realtor, Skip’s wife, Karla.

“Bye, Dad,” I said as I breezed through the kitchen. “No coffee for me this morning, I’m meeting Karla Buhner at the Royal.”

He fixed me with a look. “You’re gonna pay perfect strangers to make you breakfast but turn up your nose at mine?”

“I’ll just have coffee, like I do here. No more, no less. No worries.”

“And who is this Karla Buhner person?”

“She’s the Realtor for Crosswinds; her husband did the remodel. Brittany Humm gave her my name as the ghost buster of choice on this project.”

He grunted. Brittany Humm was a bright, wonderful woman who had been the first Realtor I’d ever met who specialized in haunted houses—which, to my surprise, was a thing. There were actually people who
wanted
to live with ghosts. Just like those folks who requested the haunted room at the Claremont Hotel.

This was precisely why my father didn’t care for her. While he was slowly coming around to
my
seeing ghosts, the understanding did not extend to Brittany or Olivier or any other of the other “ghost professionals” who were now in my supernatural social circle.

I kissed his whiskery cheek, petted Dog good-bye, and headed to Mama’s Royal Café on Broadway in Oakland.

Karla was waiting for me at a table; I recognized her from the Crosswinds Web site. She was a well–put together, somewhat tight-lipped woman. Fortyish, reddish-brown hair. Attractive in that bland way of business professionals who weren’t lucky enough to be able to wear sparkles to work.

“Hi,” I said as I approached. Her eyes slid up and down my outfit. “Karla? I’m Mel. Good to meet you.”

“You’re Mel Turner? The contractor?”

“Yes, nice to meet you.”

“I thought you were a man. By your name, I mean.”

“I get that a lot.”

The eyes flickered over my ensemble one more time. It was annoying, but this was on me. The guys I worked with were used to my personal style, and since I signed their checks and got the job done it wasn’t an issue. For everyone else it came as a surprise. But Turner Construction was doing just fine lately—I still had a full-time crew on the Wakefield Retreat Center up in Marin County, and several other smaller remodels—and frankly, I was getting the feeling that if I wanted to work full-time as a ghost consultant, there was plenty of demand in San Francisco. So I figured my combined talents of historic reconstruction and spirit talker gave me a little sartorial leeway.

We ordered coffee, and I launched into what I wanted to know.

“So, what can you tell me about Crosswinds?”

“Probably nothing you haven’t already heard,” she said as she stirred cream and two packets of Sweet’N Low into her cup. “Gorgeous property, incomparable views, so spacious! And an address to
die
for.”

I cringed at her pun, and wondered if she was even aware she’d made it. Had Karla heard about Chantelle’s death? She must have. It had been splashed over the papers; apparently, everyone but me was familiar with Chantelle-the-psychic.

“Did you hear about what happened to Chantelle?” I asked.

“Oh! Oh yes, I did. I could scarce believe it when Skip told me! And then the police came to talk with me, because I had left a message on her answering machine
right as she was killed
. What a thing!” Her blue eyes settled on me. “Oh, wait. Are you thinking there was a connection between what Chantelle said about Crosswinds, and her death?”

“It’s possible. I imagine the police will want to rule it out, anyway.”

“Oh, good heavens.” Karla sighed and began shaking another packet of sweetener in the air. “Scandal does seem to follow this house, doesn’t it? First the haunting, then the association with Chantelle’s murder?”

“No one knows yet if there is a connection. It’s probably wholly unrelated.”

Karla poured the third packet of sweetener into her mug and stirred vigorously while I sipped my unadulterated coffee and thought about what Graham and I had discovered on the Internet about Landon Demetrius. A world-famous mathematician with a well-known psychic sister. If he was wealthy it was doubtful money would have been a motive for murder, but could she have been an embarrassment to him? He said they used to be close but had grown apart. Had his logical mind suddenly snapped for some reason, and he took her out there and then?

While I was pondering, Karla took a gulp of her sweet coffee, set the mug down on the table, and pulled a file
out of her leather satchel. Crosswinds was written at the top in a round, loopy script.

“I brought the before-and-after photos you asked for,” she said. As she opened the file, a couple of very old photographs fell out. Similar to the photo I had found while touring the house with Andrew, these were sepia-toned and appeared fragile, with several of the corners broken off.

Leaning across the table, I picked one up. It was of the same young woman: pretty, clearly pampered, and yet with a sad expression on her face. In this photo, though, her long hair fell to her waist, she wore gauzy white robes, and she held a small leafy tree branch, as though costumed as a nymph or some other character from mythology. In the second photo, she carried a parasol and wore a hoop skirt and stood in profile, gazing over her shoulder at the photographer.

“They’re sort of . . . wistful, aren’t they?” asked Karla. “When they were doing the construction they found scads of these old photos behind the walls, under the floorboards, just everywhere. Skip threw most of them out, of course, but I kept a few. I thought they’d look amazing in the right frames, don’t you think? For staging houses? Like when you buy old photos in antiques stores and pretend they’re your relatives?”

“Um . . . yes, they
are
amazing.” It felt unseemly to pretend the young woman was some sort of ancestor. She gazed so directly—yet so mournfully—at the camera that I longed to know who she was, what had become of her. I saw intelligence in her eyes, an almost palpable sense of simmering urgency, as though she were willing the photographer to put down the camera so she could get on with her life.

Why were her photos found at Crosswinds? Had she lived there? Perhaps died there?

I had seen only the spirit of an older man at the house, but I hadn’t spent much time there yet, so perhaps she would appear as well. On the other hand . . . the young woman was dressed in different costumes, so perhaps she wasn’t the lady of the house after all, but an artist’s muse. A working-class woman, or an actress, who posed for money. This must have been early days for photography, when the early adaptors applied the artistic conventions of fine painting to their subjects.

“Do you know if one of the former owners was into photography?” I asked.

Karla looked surprised. “I really have no idea.”

“Skip didn’t find anything related to photography at the house? Just the photos?”

“He didn’t mention anything to me. So anyway, here are the before-and-after pics. And here’s the promo shot we’re using for the sale. We have an entire Web site devoted to Crosswinds.”

“I saw that,” I said. The eight-by-ten glossy she handed me was the same photo featured on the Web site.

Except, now that I was looking at it more closely, it looked like a figure was standing atop the turret, where the widow’s walk should have been. A ghostly, barely-there figure, hard to make out against the cloudy backdrop.

“What’s this?” I asked, pointing to the turret.

“That? It’s a tower,” Karla said. “Common to Queen Anne Victorians. Mostly for decoration, it’s largely unusable space but it does make for a distinctive roofline.”

“No, I meant—” I looked at the photo again, and saw nothing but the turret. Were my eyes playing tricks on me? I took another sip of coffee. “Sorry. I could have sworn . . .” I trailed off as the image returned. There was a figure standing on the tower. A woman in a dress. And
it looked an awful lot like the young woman in the sepia-toned pictures.

Great. Just great. I was now being haunted through
photographs
? Seriously?

“Are you all right?” Karla asked. “Let me get you a glass of water.”

“No, thanks. I’m fine. Really.”

She gasped and her blue eyes widened. “Wait a minute. . . . Did you see something? As in,
see
something?”

“I thought I did, but . . . never mind. Let’s look at the before and afters.”

The before photos showed that Crosswinds had originally featured the kind of architectural details I would have expected: gorgeous finishes and moldings and built-ins. True, it looked a bit run-down and rooms such as the kitchen, especially, had been in need of updating. People live and entertain differently these days, and want their houses wired and energy efficient. Old is not necessarily better, I really do get that. But still.

And then I saw one photo that caught my attention: It was a weathervane shaped like a ship. But unlike modern mass-produced versions, this was full-bodied, the details ornate and beautiful. A green oxide patina heightened the relief and the detail on the ship, and below it was an arrow and the four directions: North, South, East, West.

“Could you e-mail me those photos?” I asked. “They’ll be very helpful when I look for items to replace in the house.”

“I can do you one better,” she said, handing me a memory stick. “I loaded them on the memory thingee for you. Along with several listings I thought you might enjoy perusing.”

At my questioning look, she continued: “Andrew mentioned you live with your father, so I took the liberty. . . . A woman like you must want privacy.” She winked.

I didn’t quite know how to react to that.

“I, well . . . Thank you,” I said. “Karla, may I ask you something? Please don’t take this the wrong way, but your office is in Walnut Creek, and I know that Realtors tend to specialize in certain localities. Why didn’t the Flynts hire a San Francisco Realtor for Crosswinds?”

Karla laughed, clearly unoffended. “Skip introduced me to Andrew and Stephanie at the Hearts after Dark Ball last Valentine’s Day—it’s a fund-raiser for San Francisco General, do you know it? Skip and I are
huge
supporters of charitable causes, so we have that in common with the Flynts. The minute Stephanie and I met we hit it off! It’s important clients feel comfortable with their Realtors, and, well, Stephanie and I became as close as sorority sisters. And while it’s true I’m not as familiar with the city as others might be, what matters most is to have the
best
no matter her office address, don’t you think?”

“I suppose so,” I nodded. Still, it seemed odd, and I wasn’t willing to take Karla’s word for it. She seemed open and friendly enough, but she was married to Skip, who I would trust about as far as I could throw my table saw. I decided to call Brittany later and do a little fact-checking on Karla.

“I see your husband is working on an office building downtown,” I said.

“Oh, yes, his business is really taking off.”

“How did Skip get the Crosswinds remodel?”

“The Flynts had several bids, and Skip’s won. He’s really very good, as I’m sure you noticed when you visited the house.” She checked her phone. “Transformed the place; really brought it into the twenty-first century.”

“But how—” I broke off when I saw none other than Landon Demetrius III walk into Mama’s Royal Café, and come straight over to where we were sitting.

“Excuse me for intruding,” he said in that stiffly polite, deep voice.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him.

“I called your office, and a man named Stan told me I could find you here. And it just so happens I was hoping to talk to Ms. Buhner, as well.” He nodded at the Realtor sitting across from me. “You are Karla Buhner, are you not?”

“Yes,” she said, rather breathlessly. “I am.”

“You left a message on the answering machine at my sister’s flat. I heard your voice when I . . . just as I came in and found her.”

“Oh, how awful! I was
so
sorry to hear about what happened,” Karla said with a little gasp. I watched, fascinated, as she keyed into Landon: preening ever so slightly, sticking out her chest, playing with her hair. “What a shock. What a tragedy! And to hear me leaving a silly message when you were finding her . . . How
terrible
!”

I had been so focused on the shocking events that evening at Chantelle’s apartment that I hadn’t really noticed, but now it hit me: Landon Demetrius was an extremely good-looking man. He and his sister must have made quite the gorgeous pair. Despite his rigid posture and formality—or because of it?—Landon really was captivating.

“Thank you,” said Landon with a little nod. “I wanted to ask you why you had called, and if you knew anything about her schedule that day?”